Extending Learning- Involving Parents

Involving parents in their children’s learning has been proven to yield higher learning achievements. Our students learn with greater enthusiasm, motivation and the make deeper connections to their lives.

Studies like The Harvard Family Research Project among others have found, that involving parents has been associated with higher academic achievement. These studies suggest to

communicate regularly

offer volunteer opportunities

assign interactive homework

support home learning

Involving parents in supporting their children’s learning at school is NOT a luxury says Edutopia — “– it’s an integral component of student achievement and school reform. “. Edutopia refers to decades of studies on the effect of meaningful parent involvement programs in schools

Gaining parent involvement has been a difficult task for many educators. The idea to only communicate with parents via a newsletter, invite them to the classroom to observe or bring in snack food for a celebration will not do the trick. How do we involve parents in a “learnflow” to extend and amplify learning for our students? New words like “learnflow” , “Home Learning” and “Crowdsourcing” are gaining importance in the realm of 21st century teaching and learning. Parents have a significant role to play in these changes.

In another article by Edutopia, Lisa Mims observes the differences between traditional methods and modern methoda of involving parents.

Linda Yollis, a teacher from Los Angeles is having much success in involving her students’ parents over the years. We can observe through her blog how she invites parents and other family members to participate through comments on the blog, contributions as authors when they are traveling and with images to provoke and extend learning discussions in the classroom.

Graciela C, a teacher fromthe Goethe Schule in Argenting, has investigated pedagogical techniques to involve parents for the purpose of extending learning. Graciela, not only extended the learning objectives and goals of her curriculum content, but also exposed her students to 21st century skills and literacies, such as communicate, collaborate, connect, critical thinking, network literacy, digital citizenship and information literacy.

Through her blog, Graciela has been documenting her learning journey of these pedagogical methods, but we can also see the results of he work. We can see her learnflow:

Introducing curricular content> Family Challenge> Parent contributions with their children > Create a video from individual family contributions> Share the final video with students> Group reflections > Individual reflections via blog comments > parent survey.

Through various blog posts (if you don’t read Spanish, you can use Google Translate), Graciela supports different phases of the learnflow and shares the final video, she put together of the crowdsourced contributions from families.

Her students were not only aware of their own thinking (metcognition), but they saw their classmates’ examples and connections between what they had learned in school and their lives at home around the concepts of responsibility and collaboration.

In order to close the learnflow cycle and learn more about parent involvement as a method to extend learning for her students, a survey was sent to the parents who had contributed. (Results of the survey to come soon…)

A Kindergarten teacher asked the parents of her class to contribute video clips, filmed at home, as they talk with their children about traffic safety and they demonstrate in various scenarios their understanding. Watching the crowdsourced video back at school, gave the children an opportunitiy to not only share their own “segment” from home, but they learned about their classmates’ personalized perspective as well.

Gabriela B, another Kindergarten teachers asked parents to support their children in learning about a specific animal. As children become “experts” of their chosen animal, they record a video sharing their research and articulate their learning. That video was then shared on the classroom blog as well as presented by the students in class.

How are YOU investigating parent involvement and the connection to extend learning with your students? What are some techniques your are investigating? Please share some of your thoughts and examples on the topic.

5 thoughts on “Extending Learning- Involving Parents”

I teach seventh grade English in San Bernardino, CA which is a high poverty district. I have been attempting to get parents involved using traditional methods in the past and for the last few years have been trying with modern methods but I still have a difficult time getting parents involved. Few come on back to school night or school functions, papers do not always make home, or back, and the contact information is out of date.

I find it really frustrating that parents are involved with their student’s learning when they are in elementary school but back off when they hit middle school. Any suggestions on how to reach and engage those parents?

I have been teaching for 21 years now, and each year I see more the value of including parents. We just had our Back-to-School Night, and I start each year emphasizing that we are a team in their child’s education. I have been fortunate to work in a community where parents are mostly engaged, and you see a difference. When I first started out teaching, I was intimidated talking to parents, but I missed out on some valuable opportunities. During the first few weeks of school, I give a few assignments out that require the students and parents to talk to each other. I try to get conversations going on between the family members to help the learning opportunities go beyond what happens in class.

What are some ways that you have developed that you find to be most valuable in gaining parental involvement?

I have been teaching for 15 years and I have always valued the importance of involving parents in their child’s education. This year I am starting a family biliteracy after school program. I will be working with different families and asking them to do various projects with their children. Having parents make crowdsource videos would be an excellent way to involve all the families.

Are there other ways you involve parents that have had positive results?

Silvia, I’m a current graduate student at the University of Michigan, getting a Master’s in Education and a Certification in Teaching Spanish in Secondary Ed (a long description, I know). I’m currently in a Title I school, and we’ve discussed making the home to school connection stronger without creating a deeper digital divide among the haves and the have-nots. I love the idea about involving parents in videos with students, but how can we include parents and families that cannot afford these technologies? Thank you for such a great blog!